


To Hell and Back

by shelley (jedi_penguin)



Series: Back from Hell [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-15
Updated: 2010-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedi_penguin/pseuds/shelley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no place that Giles wouldn’t search for his Slayer.  AU from "Anne" onwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell and Back

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is remarkably similar to Tara’s wonderful fic, “All Shall Be Well.” This is simply a case of demented minds working alike, as both of us came up with this plot independently and at roughly the same time. There was absolutely no collaboration or plagiarizing upon either of our parts.

Giles leaned back on his sofa, covering his face with his hands. Christ, what a week. It had always bothered him that the students at Sunnydale High never entered his library; didn’t any of them read? After a week like this one, however, he wouldn’t have minded finding out that the entire student body was illiterate. For the second year in a row, the first day of school turned his quiet little haven into a madhouse. He had loved the buzzing excitement of it all last year; this year, he felt enervated instead of energized. Of course, a year ago he had been anxious for school to start because it would give him an opportunity to see Jenny and Buffy again. This year, there was nothing to look forward to.

Giles sternly told himself to forget about those two losses for the evening, knowing full well that he would do no such thing. They were like toothaches; they hurt like hell, and yet he kept probing at them, unable to leave them alone. But these aches were in his soul rather than in his body, and no amount of Novocaine was ever going to ease the hurt. No amount of scotch, either, for that matter. He had tried more than once.

The last stray thought was enough for his liquor cabinet to begin exercising its siren call upon him. He ignored it. Xander, the child of two alcoholics, hated it when Giles drank, and so the Watcher had stopped. He never would have survived the summer had it not been for Xander, Willow, and Oz, and Giles had no intention of endangering those friendships. If he lost them, he would lose his last tangible link to Buffy, and then he would be truly desolate.

Of course, there was more than one way to lose the friendship of those remarkable young people. Even if he avoided driving them away, he couldn’t protect them from vampires. Lord, but he hated it when they went patrolling. He understood the need, he admired them for doing it, but he wished that they wouldn’t. He had forbidden them to go out back in June, and they had laughed at him. Xander had childishly told Giles that he couldn’t stop them. Willow was gentler, pointing out that most of Giles’ injuries were still unhealed, thus making the younger Scoobies more effective on patrol. It was Oz who had convinced him, however. He had shrugged and succinctly observed, “Slayer’s gone, man; somebody’s gotta do it.” Yes, somebody did need to patrol, and in Buffy’s absence, it looked like the burden fell to her friends. As in every other aspect of his life, his own preferences had to bow down to that most demanding of gods: Expediency.

And now he had another young person to worry about. When he had returned to his flat from the airport, he had found a gleeful message from Xander on his machine. Apparently the gang had developed a new strategy, one involving Cordelia as “bait.” Jesus wept; he was now reduced to sending out human beings as “bait.” The fact that they hadn’t consulted him when formulating this strategy (or that he never would have agreed to it if they had) was irrelevant. They were doing the work that **his** Slayer would not do, so therefore they were his responsibility. The responsibility was strangling him. Leaving aside his own grief should anything happen to any of those brave children, he didn’t feel strong enough to face another parent blaming him for the loss of his or her child. He simply **couldn’t** listen to that particular accusation again and know it for the truth. His conscience was heavy enough as it was.

Thoughts of this afternoon’s conversation with Joyce were enough to break through his earlier resolution. He rose off the sofa and began to pour himself a glass of scotch. He did this mechanically, seemingly without conscious volition, although he did listen to the voice in his head screaming at him to water the drink down. It simply wouldn’t do for him to become too intoxicated to drive should the others call him.

As if the thought created the reality, his phone suddenly sprang to life. The shrill tones of the phone broke into his silent flat like an explosion, causing his heart to hammer violently. Some instinct, a gut feeling tied to his magic, told him that this was no telemarketer or wrong number; this call would change everything. Instantly, his mind produced a terrifyingly vivid image of Cordelia with puncture wounds on her lovely neck. _Damnit, I knew that it was too dangerous to use someone as bait. I should have gone straight to the cemetery and put a stop to this._ The next moment, his heart constricted even tighter. _What if it’s Xander? Or, God forbid, poor sweet Willow?_ Giles tried to make his hand stop shaking as he reached for the telephone. “Hello,” he grunted.

A high-pitched feminine voice answered him. “Um, hi. Are you Giles?”

It wasn’t a voice he recognized, but that didn’t automatically relieve him. From the day he had graduated from public school until the day he met his Slayer, he had been known as Rupert, or Ripper, or Mr. Giles. At this time in his life, only Buffy and her friends called him “Giles.” The stranger on the other end of the line was connected to his blonde charge in one way or another. Still, he felt the need to be cautious. “I am. May I ask your name?”

“Lily. My name is Lily. Anne asked me to call you and—“

“Anne, did you say?” Giles was confused; Buffy didn’t have any friends called Anne. “I’m afraid that—“

“Buffy,” the girl asked hesitantly. “Maybe... maybe you used to call her Buffy?”

“Buffy,” Giles breathed, wondering whether the name was a prayer or a curse for him these days. He took a steadying breath and then asked with deceptive calmness, “Is she there with you? May I speak with her, please?”

The girl made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “She isn’t here; she’s still down **there**. She told me that I had to leave, that I had to get a message to you. She made me memorize it.”

Giles only heard the first sentence and then blanked out on the rest. _She’s still down **there**._ What did that mean, other than another dead end? Almost afraid to find out, Giles asked, “Where, exactly, is **there**?”

“Hell,” the girl whispered. “Anne’s still in hell.”

“Hell?” _She went after Angel. After everything that bastard did, she went after him._ The knowledge twisted in his gut like a knife, it ached just as much as broken fingers, stung as badly as slashes upon a back, and burnt as fiercely as candles upon... Giles abruptly jerked his mind away from those memories, knowing that they would only hinder him in his search for Buffy. He tried to gather his thoughts together and failed abysmally. “What do you— I mean, why would she—“

The girl interrupted him. Giles was grateful; he wasn’t sure that he was capable of formulating a coherent thought at the moment. “Anne, I mean Buffy, said that she needs your help and that there isn’t a lot of time. Maybe I should just give you the message and you can ask her stuff when you see her.”

Buffy needed his help? Needed **him**? God, how long had he longed to hear those words? “Yes. Please, give me her message.”

“Okay.” Lily took a deep breath. “Here goes. ‘Giles, get your British butt to LA as quickly as you can. Like yesterday. I need you to do a binding spell, and every second counts. Time moves differently down here, so you’ve gotta get here **fast**. It might be dangerous, so don’t bring my mom, but ask her if you can borrow her car; yours is too slow.’ I, I think that was all of it...” The girl trailed off in confusion, but Giles didn’t need to hear anything else. He had a purpose once more, and he suddenly felt strong and capable again for the first time in months. The Watcher quickly got directions to a mission of some sort and then hung up.

Moving with a new sense of direction, Giles stalked through his apartment, collecting materials for every binding spell he knew and stuffing them into a battered knapsack. He wished that he had some idea of what it was he needed to bind, but surely one of the old standards would do the trick. As soon as he had gathered all the materials he could think of, he pulled out the faculty directory for Sunnydale High School and made a quick call. Having received a satisfactory answer, he grabbed the bag and his motorcycle helmet from the front closet, and then ran out the door.

 

~*~*~

 

Giles pulled up to the mission almost exactly two hours later. He had made excellent time, and felt a little smug about it. Maneuvering a motorcycle through bumper to bumper traffic without ever falling below seventy miles an hour was no small accomplishment. Not that Giles would ever be able to brag about it; Stanley would almost certainly have a heart attack if he knew that Giles had abused his baby so. The orchestra teacher was an excellent bloke—-as witnessed by his willingness to lend Giles his bike, without question or hesitation—-but he was an absolute nutter when it came to safety issues. He drove the librarian insane during faculty meetings.

As Giles parked the bike and grabbed his bag, his heart was in danger of beating out of his chest. In a few seconds, he would be face to face with his Slayer again. Despite his apprehension, Giles couldn’t keep a goofy grin off of his face; he wasn’t a failure after all.

Quickly striding into the mission and yelling out a “hello,” Giles scanned the room for Buffy. The only person he saw was a tall girl, very thin, with pale hair and heavy mascara smeared from sleep. She looked like a frightened doe, and the fact that he had obviously just awoken her did not help matters. Giles pitched his voice low and asked, “Lily?”

The girl spun around, and Giles silently willed her not to run. She gave him a brief smile that didn’t reach her eyes and asked, “Are you Giles?”

“Yes, I am,” he said with a gentle smile. “Where’s Buffy?”

To his horror, Lily burst into tears. “She’s still down there!”

His heart, which had been hammering in his chest moments before, suddenly came to a screeching halt. Time stood still while he tried to remember how to breathe. And then he was grabbing Lily by her skinny arms, shaking her slender body, and demanding to know where Buffy was. This made Lily cry harder, and Giles had to sternly tell himself that none of this was helping. He took a steadying gulp of air and then released the girl. “Please, Lily, I don’t understand.”

Sniffling a bit, the girl turned to him with teary eyes. “I thought Anne would be here when I got back, but she wasn’t. The dirty pool we went through was gone too.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, and Giles barely heard the last part. “She’s probably dead now.”

 _She’s probably dead now._ No, that couldn’t be right. It **wasn’t** right. “Show me this portal,” Lily stared at him in confusion, and he realized that she didn’t understand. “Um, the ‘dirty pool.’ Show me the dirty pool, and tell me why you believe that Buffy is no longer alive.”

Lily wiped her eyes and nose on her arm and stared at him trustingly. “Okay. It’s this way.”

Lily led Giles into a back room. There was a shallow pool, empty of water, with tiles on the bottom of it. It reeked of residual magic. When Giles bent down to study it, he discovered that the portal spell had been cast so many times that it would be trivial for him to reset it. As Giles rummaged in his bag for the necessary ingredients he asked, “Now, tell me about the time differential.” The girl gave him a blank look, and he stifled a curse. “Usually, time moves differently in demon dimensions than it does in our own. Do you know how fast time moves in the place where Buffy is?”

“Well,” Lily said slowly, “the meanest monster, Ken, said that a hundred years would pass in his world in the amount of time it takes for a single day here. Is that what you mean?”

 _Shit_ , Giles swore to himself. _A distant demon dimension then. **Very** distant. This was going to be a tricky spell._ Hoping that the girl was mistaken, Giles asked, “And are you sure that he was telling you the truth?”

Lily shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, Rickie left before I woke up this morning, and I didn’t see him for a full day, well, almost a day, and Anne said that he was, like, eighty when she found him. That was, like, hours ago... He should have been nineteen, but Anne said that he was eighty. I didn’t see him...” Lily trailed off in confusion, and Giles did some mental calculations. From morning to evening, that was somewhere between twelve and sixteen hours, depending upon when the boy went into the portal and when Buffy found him afterwards. Roughly sixty years in that amount of time: three and a half to five years per hour. One year might last as long as twenty minutes in our world or as little as twelve. The dimension in question was closer than he thought initially, but still hellaciously far away. It should be within the range of his capabilities, but the spell would exhaust him. Still, he **could** do it. Since the spells to open and close mystical portals were so similar, he had all the ingredients that he needed. Now, the tricky part was discovering whether he had enough strength to do both...

It took almost an hour to set the spell up. Giles hated the fact that Buffy was losing years of her life because of his slowness, but she would lose much more if he had to start over due to carelessness. Using the spell that he could still sense on the portal, Giles cautiously summoned his power and began chanting. For an endless, horrifying moment, Giles feared that the spell wasn’t going to work. Then, all of a sudden, the tiles vanished; in their place was a thick, viscous black sludge. Giles could understand why Lily called it “the dirty pool.” In addition to being black, the portal radiated evil and malevolence; it had a roynish quality that made his skin crawl. But, if that was where his Slayer was to be found, then that is where he would go. Once he was certain that the portal was secure, he handed Lily a small bag and gave her a stern glance. “Stay here and keep an eye on the clock. If I’m not back in five minutes, spread this herb over the pool and get out of here as quickly as possible. Do you understand?” The girl gave him an uncertain nod, he took a deep breath, and muttered a quote from “Macbeth” under his breath. “’If it were when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.’” With that, he jumped.

 

*~*~*~*

Giles awoke some time later, but the waves from the pool were just beginning to dissipate. He watched the slow-motion ripples in fascination for a few moments before he realized that he was actually in a great deal of pain. “My head again,” he groaned to himself in disgust. “What adventure could ever be complete without the requisite concussion?”

“Glad to see that you’re awake,” came a voice shrouded in darkness. “Time to come with us.” Giles whipped his head back and forth, ignoring the stabs of agony that his quick movements were causing, and searching for the source of that mysterious voice. His efforts to pierce the shadows were fruitless, but became unnecessary when a group of five stepped forward.

Giles studied the band warily, wondering whether they were his hosts or his captors. They were not a particularly attractive bunch. The man who had spoken, the apparent leader, had scraggy, tousled hair down to his shoulders and looked to be in late-thirties. With him were three other men, ranging in ages from mid-thirties to late-fifties, and a woman of indeterminate age. All of them were dirty and unkempt. Giles had no desire to spend any amount of time in their company. “I’m, ah, afraid that it won’t be possible for me to, um, accompany you right now. I’m, uh, looking for someone.”

“Doesn’t matter,” responded the man curtly. “You don’t get a choice here. If you came from above, then Buffy will want to see you.”

“Bu-, did you say Buffy,” Giles gasped. “She’s the person for whom I’m searching!” Giles knew he was grinning like a fool now, but he didn’t care. “Yes, please, take me to Buffy.”

The man grunted in response and nodded to the rest of his group. The three men set out down a dark passageway, and the leader silently gestured to Giles, indicating that he should proceed after them. He and the woman followed the Watcher, carefully obscuring their passage behind them.

The group moved silently and carefully for an hour or so, and Giles got the uncomfortable impression that they were moving through hostile territory. His nerves were on edge, and he had to fight down the urge to scream. Still, he had no fear of treachery. They were taking him to Buffy; he could feel it. He had always felt a thrum through his nervous system whenever his Slayer was near, and that beat was increasing with each moment. He had first felt this tingling a year and a half ago when Buffy had walked through the double doors of his library, and had despaired of ever feeling it again.

Whatever unseen threat had set the party so on edge never manifested. Although he saw no markers to indicate any real difference in terrain, his companions suddenly relaxed their guard and began talking amongst themselves quietly. The leader continued to regard Giles with suspicion, however. Obviously trying for nonchalance, and failing abysmally, he asked, “So, you know Buffy?”

“Um, yes, actually. I’m her, ah—” Giles hesitated, not sure how he should quantify himself. The idea of ‘Watcher’ was too difficult to explain, the word ‘mentor’ sounded cold and impersonal, and ‘high school librarian’ sounded insane. Still, the hostile gaze he was receiving between his shoulder blades told him that he had better come up with something. “She’s ah—um, we’re friends.” Giles smiled ruefully to himself. “Of a kind.”

The man grunted skeptically. “That’s some friendship, if you’d come to hell just to find her.” Giles shrugged non-comittally, and the man scowled at him. “It’s been a while since the slavers put on human faces and tried to sneak into our camp. I think they’re still pissing themselves over what Buffy did to ‘em last time.” Giles looked curiously at his companion, wondering whether there was a threat hidden in that statement. “‘Course that’s nothing compared to what we would do to any slaver that tried to take her out.” Ah, so it was a threat, and an open one at that. Giles was alone, in a dark and hostile place, and he supposed that he should be afraid, but all he could feel at that moment was overwhelming gladness that Buffy had surrounded herself with people who were so loyal towards her.

Before Giles could think of a response, they passed through a curtained doorway to the sound of an achingly familiar voice. “—not my first choice either, but we don’t have a lot of options here.” She was turned away from him, but Giles was just as glad. It gave him an opportunity to pull himself together before she saw him. “We’re going to be out of fresh water in less than a month if we don’t take back those tunnels. Jared, you take your unit and--”

Giles zoned out the rest of Buffy’s speech so that he could study her. Buffy’s hair was darker than he had ever seen it, and longer. Even though it wasn’t much cleaner than that of his new companions, he still liked it very much. More than her hair, there was something different about his Slayer that intrigued Giles. Something about the way she held herself, and the easy air of command in her voice, spoke of a confidence and ease with herself that she had never really possessed before. Of course, she had had years to grow into herself...

And that was when it struck him. When Giles laid out the spell, he had calculated that Buffy had spent ten to fifteen years down here just from the time that Lily had called him... but he hadn’t stopped to determine what that meant to Buffy. It was a puzzle that he needed to figure out in order to ensure the efficaciousness of his spell; it wasn’t real. His Slayer hadn’t **really** spent the last of her childhood in hell, she hadn’t **actually** lost all the years of her young adulthood to a demon dimension. But she had, and this woman calmly planning out an attack was proof.

“God, Buffy, I’m so sorry...” Giles whispered his apology like a prayer. His voice was so soft that it barely reached his own ears, but Buffy heard it. In the few months since he last saw her Giles had forgotten about her enhanced Slayer hearing, so he was surprised when she swung around. He felt like a bug beneath a microscope, trapped by her penetrating gaze.

“Giles? Are you— can it-- God, Giles!” Suddenly, Buffy was holding him, crushing him to her chest and squeezing all the air out of him. It felt wonderful, the oxygen deprivation complimenting his joy and relief rather nicely. “I can’t believe you’re here! I never thought that I would see you again.” She released him enough to get a good look at his face, though she kept hold of his arms in a painful grasp. An expression of sad wonder crept across her face. “You look just the way I remember you...”

 _You look just the way I remember you._ That phrase brought home to Giles just what his delays had cost Buffy. How many years had she been down here? She looked like she was around thirty, give or take a year or three. “I should have come sooner.” Giles blinked, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. He was even more surprised when he realized that there were tears on his face. This wasn’t like him; he didn’t normally express his emotions so openly. Of course, he didn’t ruin his Slayer’s life on a daily basis either. Despite his efforts to regain control of his voice, he stuttered out, “I’m, I’m, I’m just so sorry, Buffy.”

Buffy had tears on her face as well, but she smiled through them. “You’re here to save the day; what do you have to be sorry about, Giles?”

“I should have gotten here sooner, or been more proficient with my magic so that I could have done the spell faster,” _or stopped you from running away in the first place, or prevented myself from being kidnapped_ “or, or something.” Giles closed his eyes in pain, and attempted to reign in his swirling emotions. “Buffy, I—“

“Wow, you really **are** just the same,” Buffy said wetly. “Still taking the blame for things you can’t control. **I** got me down here, and **I** chose to stay when Lily left.” She gave him a rueful smile that churned his insides. “Of course, if you’re offering to take me home now, I wouldn’t say no.”

Somehow Giles fought back his tears and smiled back at her. “Anytime you like, Buffy.”

Buffy nodded at him, and then turned back to the people she had been addressing earlier. Everything about her changed, and Giles wondered whether the carefree girl he had once known still existed outside his memories. “Change in plans, people. There will be no more raids or attempts to recapture lost territory. I want to concentrate all of our forces on our home base and the area where Giles came through.” Buffy turned towards Giles’ anonymous companion, who was looking at him with not much less suspicion than he had been earlier. “Whereabouts did you find him, Tim?”

“The tunnels southeast of the refinery, about two hundred paces or so,” came the quick response.

Buffy turned back to him with a slight hint of fear in her eyes. “You were lucky Tim found you, Giles.” She shot a hard look at the hapless Tim. “We normally don’t patrol around there. It’s too close to enemy territory.” Turning back to her lieutenants, Buffy said, “Jared, pull back every deep patrol and put a hold on all offensives. After you’ve done that, send as many people as we can spare out to those tunnels. They aren’t going to be easy to hold, but we’re going to have to until we’re ready to move. Every man, woman, or child who isn’t protecting home base or holding those tunnels needs to be gathering things together. I don’t want to stay down here one day longer than we need to. How long will the gate stay open, Giles?”

“Uh, it’s hard to say. Lily will close it in five of her minutes. If I had to guess, I would say that is somewhere between three and five months down here...”

“That should be just about the time Aasha’s baby is born,” Buffy mused to herself. Her eyes suddenly flashed upon Jared, and her tone became much more decisive. “But I don’t want to wait that long. I want to be gone before the northern spring dries up, which is going to be a lot sooner than that. I’m glad to know that we have some extra time if we need it, but I want to be able to move as quickly as possible!” Buffy lost her focused look and produced a soft smile. It made her look much closer to the seventeen-year-old girl that Giles remembered. “We’re going home, guys. We’re really going home...”

The crowd of people surrounding Buffy all looked stunned or overjoyed, or a heady combination of the two. All except for Giles’ captor, Tim. He gave Giles a hard stare and then addressed his leader. “Buffy? Do you really think it’s a good idea to abandon our other projects just on this guy’s say-so? How do you know you can trust him?”

Buffy laughed, a carefree and joyous sound that brought a smile to the face of everyone in the room, including Tim. “Trust Giles? I would trust him with my life, without any hesitation. More importantly, I would trust him with any of your lives as well. If Giles says we’re going home, then that’s what we’re going to do. Provided you get moving, people...”

Within moments, the room had cleared. Giles was stunned by the way these people all looked towards his Slayer and obeyed her without question. This strong competent woman had no need for a Watcher, and he wondered how he might possibly fit into her life now. Clashing with his uncertainty was the unidentifiable emotion that had leapt into being during Buffy’s last speech. Her unquestioning trust in him had touched him on more levels than he could count. Adding in his joy and relief in finding her, Giles realized that he had never been quite so off-balance in his entire life. He anxiously turned to her and whispered, “Buffy?” He was asking her something, but he couldn’t have identified that something for the life of him. All he knew was that he was desperate for her to give it to him, whatever it was.

Buffy gave him a brilliant smile, the one she had often used before her seventeenth birthday, and Giles felt overwhelmed with his gratitude. Maybe that old hundred-watt smile was all that he had really needed from her. “C’mon Giles. Let’s find you a place to stay until we’re ready to go. Besides, we’ve got some catching up to do!”

 

~*~*~

They walked down a corridor dimly lit by candles in an uncomfortable silence. Every few feet there were holes in the wall, each covered with ragged blankets. Buffy kept darting furtive looks in his direction and then turning away in embarrassment. Her uneasiness with him magnified Giles’ apprehension tenfold.

The fourth time Buffy snuck a glance at him, he managed to catch her eyes with his own. She swallowed nervously and said, “So...”

“So...” he repeated back. He was desperate for her to talk to him, so he latched on to the first topic that came to mind. “How’s Angel?”

“Angel?” Buffy furrowed her brow in confusion. “What about Angel?”

“Um, I assumed, I mean, I thought that you were with Angel.” It was his turn to be confused now. “Didn’t you come down here looking for Angel?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

Why had he thought that? Giles struggled to recreate his thought process. “The mystical energies around the Hellmouth were unusually high the day that you rescued me.” And he wouldn’t think about what she had rescued him from, damnit. He **wouldn’t**. “I was certain that this was caused by an open portal to a hell dimension. I assumed that it was Angelus who opened the portal...”

“He did,” Buffy whispered softly. “And then he turned back into Angel. It didn’t matter, though. I still had to send him through in order to close the portal.”

Although he didn’t have it in him to feel sorry for Angel, Giles’ heart was aching for Buffy. “That, that was my assumption. When Lily told me that you were in hell, I couldn’t think of any reason for that to be true unless you had come searching for Angel.”

“No, I didn’t come for Angel. I haven’t thought about him for years, in fact. I was trying to save Lily and we both got trapped here.”

Giles didn’t have anything to say to that, so he contented himself with a simple, “Oh.” Inside, however, he was rejoicing. She **hadn’t** abandoned her friends, family, and responsibilities in favor of a demon, souled or otherwise. She **hadn’t** chosen Angel over everyone else in her life. Over him... This last reflection brought a bashful grin to his face, and she smiled back at him. For the first time since that horrible night, he felt... whole.

Buffy stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others, and lifted a tattered blanket to reveal a cheerless room. “This is our only empty room right now, but you are welcome to it.” The smile on her face unexpectedly turned fragile and insincere.

“Buffy,” Giles asked in concern, “are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “I’m fine. Just thinking about the couple that used to live here. They were good people...”

Giles would have liked to ask about those “good people,” to wonder why they didn’t need this room any longer, but something told him that Buffy wouldn’t appreciate those questions right now. Whatever had happened to those “good people” had cut her deeply. Instead, he smiled gratefully and nodded. “It’s lovely; thank-you. Um, can I help your people in any way?”

“As a matter of fact, you can. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But Buffy—“

“But nothing, Giles,” Buffy said firmly. “Look at yourself. You’re asleep on your feet.” Giles was surprised by that assessment; he didn’t feel tired. Of course, he had been near collapse when Lily called, but the adrenaline that had rushed through him when he heard of Buffy’s location hadn’t run through his system yet. And from what Buffy said earlier, it sounded like there were a large number of tasks to perform before they could leave. He couldn’t just stay here and sleep knowing there was work to be done. He started to tell her that, but Buffy shook her head in rueful amusement. “Look, I’m going to need you to go out and patrol, but you’ve **got** to be fully rested to do that. You’ll get people killed otherwise, and I don’t want to lose anybody else now that we’re almost home. You sleep as long as you can, and then come talk to me in the morning.”

“But how did you—“

“Sleep,” Buffy demanded imperiously.

Buffy’s eyes were twinkling, but something in them told him that she was entirely serious about sending him to bed like a small child. “How will I find you?” he asked testily, refusing to be gracious.

“Just walk down that corridor. You’ll run into somebody sooner or later, and that person can take you to me.” Giles nodded, and she smiled at him again. “Listen, Giles, I’ve got to go. I’m going to be really busy the next few days, but I promise to make time to talk to you soon.” Giles smiled back at her, and then Buffy surprised him. She gave him another hug, this time accompanied by a brief, chaste kiss on his cheek. “I’m so happy to see you again, Giles. You have no idea.” And with that, she was gone.

After Buffy left, Giles collapsed onto the bed to think about the events of the past half-hour. As soon as he was off his feet, however, the exhaustion that Buffy had seen crashed down upon him. Moments later, he was unconscious.

 

~*~*~

 

When Giles awoke, he was quite disconcerted. It took him several minutes to figure out why. More than being in a strange place, he was thrown off by the lack of sunshine; it bothered him that he had no idea how many hours he might have slept. Giles tried to imagine what it had been like for Buffy, how he would feel to live without the sun for over a decade. He shuddered, and then resolved to shake it off. He was refreshed, and that was what counted. Now he could start being of use.

He rubbed his face, and winced when he encountered stubble. Ah well, since he lacked both razor and water, there was no help for that. Grinning ruefully to himself, the Watcher wandered into the corridor and began retracing his steps from the night before.

Giles hadn’t gone far when he heard the sound of running feet coming from behind him. He spun around in alarm, only to find himself facing a rather diminutive opponent: a boy of eight or nine years. The child had light brown skin and fine curly hair, with the trademark beauty that often seemed to accompany children of mixed parentage. Seeing that he had the stranger’s attention, the boy smiled at him and asked, “Are you Giles?”

“Yes,” Giles admitted cautiously.

“Me too,” the boy responded incongruously. “I’m supposed to show you around. I bet you’re hungry.”

“I’m fine,” Giles said firmly. “I would prefer it if you would just take me to Buffy, please.”

“She said you’d say that,” the boy grinned. “We’ll stop by the food hall on the way to headquarters.”

“Well, if you’re sure it’s on the way,” Giles agreed reluctantly. The truth was that he was starved, but his hunger for food was inconsequential in comparison to his craving to see his Slayer. Now that it was morning (or afternoon, or whatever the hell it was), he had trouble believing that he had truly found her. He **needed** to see her again, if for no other reason than to settle his nervous stomach.

“Yep, totally on the way.” The boy stared at him intently and Giles had to fight to keep from squirming underneath the lad’s gaze. “So what’s tweed?”

Giles had prepared himself for difficult or intrusive questions--after all, the boy had probably never met anyone from his parents’ native dimension before--but this left him stumped. “I beg your pardon?”

"My mom told me that you always wear tweed, but she couldn’t describe it to me very well. So I was wondering what you’re wearing that’s made out of tweed.”

Startled, Giles looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue striped shirt, blue suspenders, and a red striped tie. He vaguely recalled taking off his jacket in the mission before he began his attempt to open the portal. “Um, nothing. I, I’m not wearing any tweed at the moment.”

“Huh.” The boy seemed disappointed, and Giles wondered whether he should apologize to the boy.

“I do have some clothes made out of tweed at home,” he hastened to assure his young companion. “I’m just not wear—” Giles trailed out as the boy’s earlier statement came into focus for him. “Your mum told you that I wear tweed? How would... Um, **who** is your mum?”

“Buffy.” He knew who it was, of course he did, but he needed to hear it spoken aloud. The boy’s intense hazel eyes were nearly unique; he had only seen the same shade once before, in the eyes of his Slayer. And yet, still, it was a shock. “I thought you would have guessed that when I told you my name.”

Giles was still reeling from the knowledge that his young charge was a mother, so perhaps he wasn’t at his sharpest at the moment, but that comment made absolutely no sense to him. “Uh, I don’t... When did you tell me your name? What **is** your name?”

“Giles.”

“Yes?”

The boy laughed. “No, that **is** my name. Giles Davis.”

Giles was flabbergasted. “Buffy named you after me?” That couldn’t be right. It wasn’t right. She resented him for forcing her to face her destiny; she would never name her child after him. And yet, apparently, she had.

“She told me that her life just wasn’t right without a Giles in it. My dad said that he wouldn’t have let her name me Giles, except nobody ever uses their last name down here and he forgot what it was until I was a couple of weeks old.”

“Your father...” Of course there was a father. Giles wondered what sort of complications the man would create. Would he try to prevent his Slayer from returning to the Hellmouth? And would Buffy balk at bringing her child into possible danger? Giles shook his head; these were fruitless avenues to pursue as long as they were still in hell. Besides, he wanted to learn more about his namesake. “Your father didn’t approve of naming you after me?”

“Oh, he didn’t mind that. He just minded the names Giles and Davis together. He said it sounded too much like a musician that he used to listen to with his grandmother. Have you ever heard of Miles Davis?”

Giles was feeling quite dazed. Young Giles appeared to have boundless enthusiasm and could, evidently, talk a mile a minute. “Um, yes. He’s quite a talented artist. I have several of his albums, in fact.”

“Cool! Can I listen to them sometime? I’ve never heard jazz, though my dad used to hum songs to me. Ooh, here we are. You’re lucky you got here yesterday. Sabita is in the kitchen this week, and she makes the best bread of anybody. Do you like bread?”

Giles was dizzy from trying to keep up with the boy’s rapid-fire conversation. He contented himself with a smile and a grateful nod for his breakfast. The boy didn’t seem to notice his lack of participation in the conversation, but kept up his friendly chatter.

The portions seemed meager to Giles, particularly for a growing boy, but Buffy’s son didn’t seem to find them so. The boy’s enthusiasm for his pitiful breakfast was entirely unfeigned, and Giles wondered uneasily how often he had received less... or gone without altogether. The Watcher scanned the room, and noticed that everyone in the chamber had the stringy, malnourished look of the perpetually under-fed.

Last night, Giles had seen that a large number of people lived down here, but that fact hadn’t really impinged upon his consciousness. He was willing to work on the rescue of Buffy’s community because it was clear that she wouldn’t come back without them, but he wasn’t truly concerned with their welfare. His first and last priority had been the retrieval of his Slayer; nothing else mattered. Now he was sickened that he had felt that way. Looking around now, he saw human beings in desperate need of a new life. He needed to help these people because it was the right thing to do, not because Buffy wanted it. He turned to his namesake with a new determination and said, “Could you please take me to Buffy now? I have a lot of work to do.”

The boy grinned contagiously at him in response, and Giles found himself laughing. It was the first time he had laughed in six months. It felt good.

~*~*~

When young Giles took him to Buffy, he was thrown into the midst of chaos. His namesake gave him a quick grin, ran over to Buffy to give her a peck on the cheek, and then left without a word. Giles would have given a great deal to follow him. Everyone was yelling and working at cross-purposes, and Giles despaired of this rag-tag group actually accomplishing anything. He was as far wrong as it was possible to be, and all the credit belonged to his Slayer.

Buffy was an amazing administrator. She had an uncanny ability to quickly resolve disputes, to find people without purpose and give them tasks to do, and to keep track of a thousand small details in her head while she supervised the big picture. Two minutes in the midst of all that madness left Giles with no doubt whatsoever that Buffy would organize the removal of her people and their belongings in record time. She had been an extraordinary girl before she left Sunnydale, but she had grown into an absolutely unique woman. Giles wondered whether he had had anything to do with her transformation, and selfishly prayed that he had. He could look at the woman Buffy had grown into, and know for the first time in his life that he had truly made a difference.

Giles only had a few minutes to admire Buffy before she noticed his presence. “Giles! I’m so glad that you’re here! I need somebody with your fighting ability to go out and start rounding up our deep patrols.”

Giles wanted to help Buffy, he was desperate to help her, in fact, but he was loath to leave her side again so soon after finding her. “But I thought, that is you sai—“

“You thought that I would keep my promise to catch up with you today,” Buffy finished for him. “I really wish I could, Giles, but I don’t think you realize what a God-send you are to me. You’re well trained and are considerably better nourished than any of my people. That makes you the equivalent of at least two of my best fighters, perhaps three. If you go out for me, that means more people can work on moving us out of here.” Giles hesitated, flattered beyond reason at her assessment of his abilities. Before he could formulate a response, however, she completely unmanned him. She gave him a pout. “Please, Giles, I don’t think you realize how much I need you.”

And so he had accepted the dull sword she gave him and left on her mission. The irony of Buffy handing out assignments while he fought against them gave him a certain amount of wry amusement.

As Giles trudged along behind his two unpleasant companions, his thoughts lingered on that pout more than he would have liked. Although he would have sworn that it was impossible, Buffy’s pouting abilities had improved tremendously over the years. When she had pouted at him as a teenager, it always flustered him, and left him feeling wrong-footed. The sight of a disheveled but mature Buffy pouting at him was an altogether different matter. It had a disquieting effect, one that he was disinclined to analyze at the moment. Or ever, he sternly amended, as he suddenly remembered that Buffy had a man in her life. A man who liked jazz, who had the seldom used and easily forgotten last name of Davis, and who presumably loved the mother of his child very much. She was Buffy: how could he not? Giles wondered whether Davis was in any way worthy of her.

That last thought brought Giles up short. He had no business whatsoever passing judgement on Davis, and he had even less call to think about his Slayer the way he had been a moment ago. She may be an adult now, and an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but she was no less off-limits to him than she had been when she was a child. She was in a committed relationship, and had at least one child. Moreover, he was still her Watcher; he still held a position of trust over her. He had never held any desire to violate that trust before, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Hoping to distract himself, Giles let his thoughts wander towards his comrades. The mission had been entrusted to Tim, the leader of the group that had found him the night before. Tim made no effort to hide his dislike and distrust of Giles, though at least he didn’t flaunt his suspicions. He simply didn’t care enough about Giles to engage him in conversations, even hostile ones. Giles’ other companion, Michelle spoke even less; apparently she had been rather badly traumatized by “the slavers” (whoever they were) before Buffy rescued her. He had rather hoped that he might learn more about Buffy’s community during the course of this trip, but Tim and Michelle were formidable in their silence. Giles sighed and resigned himself to a long mission.

~*~*~

Although Buffy had assured him that he was fitter than most of her fighters, Giles was stumbling with exhaustion by the time they found the first patrol group. Tim told them that they were to come in, and they offered to share their meal and campfire with Giles’ group. Giles took advantage of neither, as he was asleep almost before he finished collapsing to the ground.

The next “day” Giles and his two companions bid farewell to the other patrol and then the two groups headed in opposite directions: the others headed back towards home base while the three members of his small group went looking for the next patrol. Giles felt vaguely guilty that he hadn’t learned the names of any of the people from the other group, but this feeling was short-lived. Another day filled with long brutal hours of walking and virtually no rests exorcised all feelings of regret rather nicely... as well as all other cogent thoughts. The end of the second march was just like the first, although at least Giles managed to stay awake long enough to eat this time.

When the third “day” turned out to be identical to the other two, Giles began longing for the chance to lay down and die. Or maybe he was already dead; he certainly **felt** like a zombie. Luckily, however, Michelle did not succumb to the same mind-numbing exhaustion that had overpowered Giles and Tim. Hours (perhaps days?) after they had left the second camp, Michelle spotted a group of “slavers.” Giles had heard these creatures referenced several times, and was very curious to see them.

Tim ordered Giles and Michelle to press close to the wall, but the Watcher snuck a peek around the corner. They were hideous. The “slavers” had dirty brown skulls, with patches of raw oozing skin showing through in spots, and glowing red eyes. Giles gagged and plugged his nose when he realized that the odor of decay that they were emitting was even less pleasant than their appearance. Michelle shot him a quick look of sympathy, and Giles wondered what sorts of torments these creatures had visited upon her. They looked capable of anything.

It took several minutes for the column to march past. Giles spent the time mentally reviewing his list of warrior creatures from distant demon dimensions, trying to place Tim’s “slavers.” The only one that even seemed close was the Jai’il, but that seemed unlikely. The Jai’il were certainly vicious enough to capture humans and throw them into slavery, but traditionally they were too obsessed with their constant fratricidal wars to bother with other races. He couldn’t understand why they would go to the effort to enslave a relatively weak race such as humans... unless they had sustained massive losses in one of their pointless wars. Were they suffering a labor shortage? If so, then Buffy could probably make allies with one of the other clans. Unless human laborers were one of the spoils of war over which the various clans fought... Hmmm, what were the main Jai’il clans again? The Kvu’ot, the Osh-shutz, the Krayzeem, and one other that he couldn’t recall for the life of him. Still, he was pleased to remember that much, and hoped that Buffy would be able to make use of some of his knowledge.

His thoughts were broken when Tim touched his shoulder and whispered, “Let’s go. I think they’re gone, but we need to move quietly just in case.” Giles and Michelle nodded silently, and they were off.

Their pace was slower than before, as they made an extra effort to move silently and cover up their tracks. But in the end, it was dumb luck that proved to be their undoing. Michelle, who was at point, ran headfirst into a Jai’il who was rounding a corner in the tunnels at the exact same moment. Luckily it was a small patrol rather than a column like the one they had encountered earlier, but they were still outnumbered by seven to three.

Within the blink of an eye, Giles was tackled by two demons. They were even more fearsome and pungent in close quarters than they had been at a distance, and Giles had to admit that the chances of them getting out of here alive were very slim indeed. The Jai’il were just as strong as they looked — Christ, they were strong! — and close quarters made the fighting even more brutal.

The narrowness of the corridors made it impossible for Giles to check on the progress of his two companions, so the Watcher decided that he needed to focus upon his own survival. To his delight, Giles soon discovered that the blade that Buffy had given him was stronger than it looked. Within five minutes or so (given the inherent difficulty of gauging the passage of time while in combat), he managed to decapitate both of his original Jai’il and stab a third through the heart. Giles grinned happily when he noted that he had come out of the fight with nothing worse to show for it than some small scrapes and the beginnings of a large bruise on his thigh.

After checking himself for injuries, Giles swung around to see if any of his companions needed help. He abruptly lost his grin. Tim was surrounded by three Jai’il; he was still holding his own, but the blood pouring from his shoulder suggested that he wouldn’t be able to do so for long. Hell, with that kind of blood flow he wouldn’t even be conscious for long. Michelle was dead. Tiredly lifting his sword, Giles went to rejoin the fight... only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

The Watcher spun around to face this new opponent, sword already raised. It was a group of nine humans. Of course, this must be the third patrol that they were sent to find! Giles slumped to the ground in exhaustion, and watched the newcomers quickly dispatch the three remaining Jai’il. One of them stayed to talk to Giles. “I don’t recognize you, and I sure don’t recognize those clothes!”

“I’m Rupert Giles, a friend of Buffy’s,” he breathed tiredly. “I came below to find her.”

“Giles,” the stranger asked. “Like her son?”

Giles was surprised, though he supposed he shouldn’t be. This was a very insular community, so it made sense that all its members should be familiar with each other. “Yes. Buffy did name Giles after me.” He grinned for a moment. “Very nice of her, I thought.”

“Yeah, well your coming down to hell after her is pretty nice too.” The man looked bitter for a moment. “She’s probably the only person down here who has anybody who would care enough to do that.” He abruptly stuck out his hand to help the newcomer stand up, and Giles gratefully accepted the assistance. “I’m Hugh. Are you okay to walk? It’s gonna be tough carrying both you and Tim, but we can do it if we have to.”

“I’m fine,” Giles assured Hugh. He looked at Michelle, and then muttered under his breath, “ **I’m** fine.” Hugh’s eyes flashed in sympathetic recognition, and Giles quickly blinked away some incipient tears. “In fact, why don’t I leave the guard duty to you and your oh-so-timely friends, while I carry Tim?”

Hugh raked a critical eye over Giles, apparently debating the wisdom of letting him carry Tim when he was so obviously exhausted, but in the end he just nodded. “Let’s get back to our camp. It’s pretty secure, so we can stay there a day or two.”

“Thank you. That would be...” Giles hesitated, trying to think of a word that could adequately express his gratitude for a day of rest. Finally, he settled on, “That would be lovely.”

Hugh nodded again, and then turned to his people. “Come on, let’s get back to camp. The slavers will be looking for these dudes soon, and I don’t want to be here when they find ‘em.”

When Giles went to support Tim under his uninjured shoulder, the wounded man gave him an inscrutable look. “You handled yourself pretty well. I see now why Buffy trusts you.” Giles smiled shyly, oddly touched to have earned the trust of such a hard-bitten man. Tim grinned back and added, “I’m still not sure that I like you though.”

“Fair enough,” Giles answered lightly. “I’m not sure that I like you.”

“Can’t think of anybody who does,” Tim chuckled.

Giles chuckled quietly with Tim until he noticed that his companion was terribly pale, and getting more so by the moment. The laughter immediately died in his throat, and he wondered how these brave people were able to laugh at all under these circumstances. The thought of Buffy living this way for a decade or more nearly crushed him.

 

~*~*~

They stayed at the outpost camp for two days, waiting for Tim to recover enough to travel. While they waited, Giles went out on five short patrols with various members of the outpost, which resulted in two brief and bloodless skirmishes. Because these patrols were short, Giles was able to rest up completely during his down time in camp. While in camp, the nine members of the outpost told Giles everything that he wanted to know about their small community. What he heard horrified him.

All of the men and women that he had met below had been taken as teenagers or children, sometime within the last twenty-four hours. Apparently, the Osh-shutz members of the Jai’il clan (or so Giles assumed them to be, when one middle-aged woman mentioned that Buffy always called them the “Jell-O Shots”) had fashioned human masks for themselves. Using these disguises, the Jai’il Osh-shutz went to various human cities around the world looking for young runaways. They would find the most desperate children and entice them into their homeless shelters. Once the children entered these shelters, they were transported here, to the Osh-shutz’s home dimension, and forced to work at various manufacturing jobs. When the children became too old and infirm to maintain productivity, they were returned to their city of origin and left to die of old age. An efficient method for the Osh-shutz to solve their labor problem, but a bleak existence for the young people tricked into coming here.

Apparently, the Osh-shutz had always been brutal, but they became far more so about twenty years ago when an entire work cell had escaped one night during rest hours. The Osh-shutz had been furious, killing every member of the cells on either side of the missing dorm room, and had thereafter been very quick to kill any human who didn’t obey them immediately and without question. There had been absolutely no resistance of any kind from the day of that mass escape... until Buffy’s arrival.

Each member of the outpost shared his or her recollection of that day, how glorious Buffy had been in her defiance, how fearless and how flippant. Their descriptions were so vivid that Giles could almost believe that he had witnessed this scene for himself. And each described how terrified they had been by her courage, for every slave knew that there was a stiff penalty to be paid for challenging the Jai’il, and each of them expected to be the one to pay it. Their fears seemed to come true when Buffy took six people with her and left the rest of the slaves to their fates. And then a miracle had occurred: she came back.

None of the slaves had dreamed that an escapee would ever come back, but Buffy had done just that. Every day she attacked the Jai’il, and every day she liberated a few slaves. Some days she freed twenty or thirty at a time, and some days only one... but she never failed to do what she could.

It had been tough going at first, because she had to work on her own. True, she trained every slave that she freed how to fight, but all of them were in very poor shape for months after they were rescued. Everything turned around for her, however, when she encountered the work cell that had escaped a decade or so before her arrival. The original crew of twenty men and women had been whittled down to eight, but those eight were all trained fighters in excellent shape. (Giles was not surprised to learn that Tim had been one of those original escapees, for he had the hard look of a man who had been fighting for a very long time.) There might have been conflicts between Buffy and the other group were it not for the leader of the work cell. Jahari Davis quickly recognized the fact that Buffy was a better tactician and warrior than he was, so he turned leadership of his group over to her. And he fell in love with her.

Everyone agreed that Buffy and Jahari had been an unstoppable team. Buffy was the strategist; Jahari was the morale officer. Buffy had decided when and where they should strike, and then fought alone; Jahari had led everyone else into battle, following Buffy’s battle plans but his own instincts once he was on the field. The two of them together were a formidable force, and thanks to them, there were no longer any humans still serving the Osh-shutz.

Eventually the Osh-shutz realized that the humans had become a definite threat to them, one that was looming larger and larger by the day. Instead of waiting for the humans to raid them, they began seeking the humans out and attacking them. This backfired, however, when the humans inflicted some severe defeats upon the demons. In fact, Buffy and Jahari were on the verge of wiping out the Osh-shutz altogether when a catastrophe occurred: Jahari was killed during a surprise attack upon the human colony.

Apparently Jahari had defended the colony well, killing a large number of Jai’il and giving most of the humans an opportunity to escape, but it was still a devastating loss. Not only had they lost one of their leaders, but Buffy--their surviving leader--had lost her drive and ambition along with her mate. Luckily, the Osh-shutz had lost a great deal more and were unable to take advantage of the humans’ loss of focus. So, for two years, it had been a stalemate between the two groups. The humans and the Osh-shutz continued to patrol, and sometimes they fought short bitter skirmishes, but mostly they avoided each other. Both had lost too much to the other.

Giles was beginning to understand what this rescue meant to these people. They had all come to accept that this was how they were going to lead the rest of their lives, constantly fighting and scratching for their existence; and now, he had come to lead them back to their own dimension. It was a heady feeling, to know that he had given these people hope for the first time in decades. But this euphoria was tempered with an intense anxiety. **He** had crashed into their lives with promises of returning home, so that meant that **he** was responsible for making sure that they got there. Oh, he knew that no one had made him accountable for his or her escape, but the feeling lingered anyway.

The edginess he felt finally caused him to talk to Hugh. “Um, while I have appreciated your hospitality a great deal, I really feel, uh, what I mean to say is, shouldn’t we be pressing on?”

Hugh gave him a hard look. “You think I don’t want that? I do, but take a look at Tim. He’s getting worse, not better, and it’s going to take two men just to move him. I can’t leave the group with less than five fighters, so that leaves just two people to send with you.”

Giles was confused. “But, when Buffy originally sent us out, there were only three of us. I don’t understand the problem.”

Hugh sighed in frustration and ran his hands through his hair. “The problem is that Tim is easily worth two fighters. I saw what you did to your three slavers, and I guess you count for two as well, so Buffy figured that you could get by with three. See, I don’t have any fighters that are anywhere near Tim’s ability, so two people aren’t really gonna do ya. But two people are all I have, unless Tim gets better. Or dies. So we’re stuck, until Tim makes up his mind.”

“Do you want the portal to close, because we didn’t get there in time,” Giles asked harshly. “Buffy needs us back at home base, helping to make sure the colony is protected while it moves. And that last patrol deserves to know that they are going home. I say eight of you back at home base is better than none; leave me with two people who know their way to the next patrol and we’ll take our chances.”

Hugh glared at Giles for a moment, and then gave a curt nod. “Fine. Which patrol are you going to find?”

“I, um, I—“

“You don’t know, do you,” asked Hugh nastily. Giles shook his head bashfully, and Hugh threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. We’ll ask Tim.” Before Giles could bend down to waken the injured man, however, Hugh grabbed him roughly by the arm. “Listen, English guy, you’d better be **damn** careful with my people. I’ll be **really** pissed off if you get any of them killed.” Giles flinched. Hugh’s expression became less fierce, but he still didn’t let go of Giles. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not your fault that Michelle died; you had your own slavers to worry about. But still, don’t get my people killed.”

“I will do my best,” Giles assured his new friend.

Hugh released the Watcher and smiled at him. “And hey, don’t get yourself killed either. Something tells me that Buffy wouldn’t like it, and I would hate to have to be the one to tell her.”

Giles grinned boyishly at him. “As a young friend of mine recently told me, ‘that's part of our whole mission statement. Don't get killed.’ Sage advice, that, and I intend to follow it.”

Hugh nodded thoughtfully. “Cool.”

 

~*~*~

There was no one around, and his companions were getting nervous. It had started the previous day when his guide commented that they should not have been able to get so close to the human colony without meeting a patrol. As they approached home base, the two people that Hugh had given Giles and the six members of the last deep patrol were becoming more and more wary. And it didn’t help that they were all stumbling along on the last of their reserves.

Giles was rather proud of his hardiness, but he couldn’t hide from the fact that he was tired. Lord, but he was tired. He had bid farewell to Hugh and Tim a week ago. Or maybe it had been a month. There was no accurate method of keeping track of time down here, all one could do was count sleep periods and call the time in between “a day.” As Giles had learned when he followed Tim, the leader of each group set the “day” for his or her people, so a leader with a strong constitution could easily run his people into the ground. The guide that Hugh gave him when he went out to find the last two patrol groups, was such a leader. Consuela made everyone march for brutally long periods of time, and Giles was convinced that each of her “days” lately lasted for at least sixty hours. And he was certain that none of his eight sleep periods had lasted for more than half an hour. Not even the sleepless weeks that had followed Jenny’s murder had left him this drained.

Even before they reached home base proper, everyone drew their weapons and began searching the shadows. When they entered the great hall without encountering a single creature, friendly or not, the group’s fear became palpable, a living, breathing demon. In the midst of this tension, Giles was shocked to realize that his entire being was alive and vibrating. A singular thrum passing through his body that could mean only one thing. “Buffy,” he bellowed. His companions glared at him, but he just gave them a goofy grin. “It’s Buffy. She’s here. I don’t know where everyone else is, but Buffy is here.”

The others had barely had time to process this statement when a small person with light brown hair launched herself at him. Giles barely had enough strength to prop his eyelids up, but suddenly he found himself supporting the weight of a full-grown woman. “Giles,” Buffy exclaimed happily, and Giles felt his exhaustion dropping away as if by magic. He wasn’t surprised by this; after all, **Buffy** had always been magic.

“Buffy,” he breathed, “I don’t think you could ever guess just how delighted I am to see you. But perhaps a bit of oxygen wouldn’t go amiss?”

Buffy blushed in embarrassment, and Giles smiled to let her know that he was joking. She smiled back at him, and took on a bantering tone. “My bad. I’m just so glad to see you back, safe and sound, and concussion-free.”

It was Giles’ turn to blush. “Well...”

Buffy frowned and turned to his guide. “Hey, Connie, you didn’t let this guy get hit on the head, did you?”

Consuela turned to Buffy in surprise. “How did you know that? We only got in one skirmish after we left Hugh, and your friend was the only one to get hurt. I’ve gotta say, though, that he has the hardest head I’ve ever seen. The next morning he was fine.”

“Course he was,” Buffy said proudly. But then she turned to her Watcher and scowled. “But I thought you were going to be more careful.” She swatted him on the arm and he tried not to flinch, only to discover that it wasn’t necessary to brace himself after all. She had clearly learned the limits of her Slayer strength over the years.

“Listen,” grumbled one of the members of the last deep patrol, a surly man who had never given the Englishman his name. “I’m glad that your friend can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, but where is everybody?”

Buffy scowled at the interruption, but her voice was even when she answered. “Up above. Everybody is already up above. Or at least, most everybody. There are about fifteen people down below guarding the portal, and there’s me, waiting for all of you. Out of six hundred people, the twenty-five of us are the only humans left below.”

Amazed murmurs met this announcement, and Giles fought down a proud grin. She’d done it. She had moved hundreds of people, and their belongings, in a week and a half (or a month, or however long he had been gone). It had been utter chaos when he had left to gather the deep patrols, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how she had pulled it together, but somehow she had. She truly was amazing.

Giles’ musings were broken by another voice, though he didn’t see who had spoken. “What are we still doing here then? Let’s go.”

“Be serious, Jimmy,” Buffy said harshly. She scanned an appraising eye over everyone in the group, and it chilled Giles to know that she was evaluating him with the same detachment that she was showing towards the others. “You’re all tired. Exhausted, in fact. It’s nearly three hundred paces to the portal, and there’s a good chance that we might have to fight to get there. I’m not leading any of you anywhere near that place until everyone has had a good night’s rest. Anyone who’s tired will just put us all in danger. We stay here until every last one of you is slept out, and then we all go to the portal together.” The surly patrolman opened his mouth, but Buffy nailed him with a steely glare. “Keep it to yourself, Baker. I don’t want to hear it. We’re staying here tonight, and that’s all there is to it. Get yourself to your quarters, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Giles’ companions began dispersing quickly; clearly they knew better than to go against Buffy when she was in this sort of mood. Feeling that retreat was indeed the better part of wisdom, Giles made to follow the group. The feel of a small hand upon his arm arrested him. The grip was light as a feather, but there was iron beneath the gentleness, and he stopped without hesitation. “Buffy?”

“Not you, Giles. Look, the quiet is getting to me. Will you come back to my quarters and keep me company?” Giles looked uncertain, so Buffy took on a pleading tone. “Please, Giles. You have no idea how much I hate going back to my empty rooms. I have food for you; we can eat together. Please?”

Giles sighed, defeated. He had no desire to eat, and even less desire to talk—-all he really wanted to do was find an empty bed and crash--but there was no way he could resist that pleading tone. And adding in a pout was just plain unfair. Still, wanting to give in gracefully, he lightly grabbed her elbow and steered her out of the common room. She gave him a grateful smile, and Giles decided that sleep was over-rated anyway.

~*~*~

Once he started eating, Giles realized that he was starved. As a result, neither said anything for several minutes, as Giles devoured his food and Buffy watched him with an indulgent smile. Finally, however, he dabbed his face with a rag and smiled shyly at his Slayer. “I must say, I’m very impressed with how much you accomplished while I was out on patrol. From the mass of people that I saw gathered here before I left, I never would have guessed that you would be able to start moving people up already. And yet you’re almost finished! You’ve done good work here, Buffy. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Why, thank you kind sir,” Buffy replied with a whimsical smile. Her expression sobered, however, as she continued. “You’re right though; there are a lot of us. Or were. But yeah, we started moving people up pretty fast. A few days after you left, we sent up all the old people, and all the adults who were too injured or hacked up to work. I figured that they wouldn’t be of much use in moving things, but they could watch the children. As soon as they were in place, all the kids went up. Then we started moving the stuff.” Buffy gave him a rueful smile. “Be glad you missed that! It was really hard, moving crap until your arms felt like they were going to fall off, and then patrolling until you couldn’t stand upright. Not that I think you had it easy,” she added hastily, “but still, the move was hard.”

“I imagine it was,” Giles murmured. Although he was determined to help Buffy in every way possible, he was glad that he had missed such backbreaking labor. Not for laziness, but for pride. She thought that he was fit, and she would have used him. And he would have let her. He would have worked himself to death before admitting that he still wasn’t completely healed from his ordeal with Angelus four months previously. He was glad that he hadn’t been forced to do that.

Buffy had a distant look in her eyes, and Giles hoped that she would share her thoughts, even though he had no intention of sharing his own. To his relief, she did. “You want to know the worst part though? It’s the quiet. There should be children around, a lot of them. I miss them all, but I physically ache for my own. I mean, yeah, I know that they won’t miss me; it will only be a few moments for them, but these last couple of weeks have been killing me.”

This answer raised several questions for Giles, but there was one that over-crowded all others. “Couple of weeks? I **knew** that I was gone for more than a week and a half!”

Buffy laughed. “Try closer to three weeks. Tim and Consuela are brutal, aren’t they?” Suddenly, Buffy sobered and her eyes got misty. “Or at least, Tim used to be brutal. He was famous for it...”

And there it was. He finally had the opening for the question that he had wanted to ask from the moment he saw her. He wished that this opening had never come. “So, how is Tim?”

Buffy’s face instantly fell. “He didn’t make it.”

Giles didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t gotten to know Tim well enough to call him friend, but a certain camaraderie had grown between them during their time together. And he could clearly see that Buffy was distressed by his loss. “I’m so sorry, Buffy,” he said softly, knowing that it wasn’t nearly enough. Giles took a deep breath, and tried to think of something comforting to say. Nothing was springing to mind. Perhaps if he knew more about her relationship with the taciturn man? The only thing he knew for sure was that Tim had admired Buffy, and had seemed very jealous of the fact that Giles had had a previous relationship with his beloved general. “Were you, um, I mean, was he a—“ Giles blushed ferociously, realizing that he was in danger of asking something that was none of his business.

“Was he a close friend?” Buffy smiled sadly. “Yes. Yes, he was. I think he would have liked to be my man as well, but I just didn’t think of him that way.”

Giles felt a rush of something at that statement, but chose to ignore it. He would define that feeling later, when Buffy was finished talking. Probably much later. “He told me that he was part of Jahari’s original group. I take it that you knew him for quite some time.”

“Yeah,” Buffy mused, “a long time. He was the last one, you know?”

This mystified Giles, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “The last what?”

“The last member of Jahari’s work cell. They’re all gone now. Jolene, my sister-in-law, died in childbirth a few months ago. She died in your room, in fact. And when she did, Tim was the only one left. And now Tim’s dead.” The moisture that had been collecting in Buffy’s eyes suddenly broke free in a rushing torrent. Giles collected her in his arms and held her as tightly as he could. He barely heard her when she sobbed into his shoulder; “all my friends are dead.”

“Shh. Hush now, Buffy. It’s alright.” Normally Giles hated dealing with a woman in tears, but somehow this felt right to him. He soothed down her hair, he murmured nonsensical endearments into her ear, he rocked her, and he let her cry. And it all comforted him just as much as it did her. Perhaps this was what he had needed for months.

He had no idea how long he held her, but eventually Buffy cried herself out. He hated to let her go, but she clearly needed some sleep now. That thought suddenly made him remember his own exhaustion as well. So he gently laid her down on a nest of rags in the corner and turned to go. As he touched the curtain, however, Buffy whispered, “Will you take me back to Sunnydale?”

“That is my intention,” Giles admitted, though he kept his face away from hers. “If you’re willing to go, that is.”

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” Buffy said quietly. “Believe it or not, I think it would be restful for me.”

Giles whirled around and stared at her in astonishment. “Clearly, your memories of the Hellmouth have become fonder over time. Believe me, Sunnydale is never restful!”

“I know that,” Buffy chuckled. “It’s... See, the thing is, I’m tired of being responsible for others.” Giles’ eyes widened in alarm. If the Slayer didn’t want to do her sacred duty, then the world was undoubtedly doomed. Buffy hastened to relieve him, however. “Um, wait, that didn’t come out right. I’m not tired of fighting; I’m tired of having others fight for me. Tim only went out on that mission because I sent him. I sent Michelle. Everyday, I send dozens of people out, and a bunch of them never make it back, and all those deaths are my fault.”

“Buffy,” Giles breathed anxiously, “ **No**. No, that’s not true. You can’t think that way.”

“Can’t I?” she asked cynically. “So many deaths, and almost all of them my fault. I want to go back to fighting by myself, with nobody else by my side. Not watching out for anybody other than me. And I can get that in Sunnydale. I’m not a general there; I’m the Slayer. The one girl in all the world. The **one** girl. I want that. God, do I want that!”

Did she really remember so little of her life before she came down here? How many of her memories had she rewritten in order to survive down here? Picking his words carefully, Giles said, “You can’t get that in Sunnydale; you can’t get that anywhere. Others will always want to join the fight against evil, and you can’t stop them. You can’t make their choices for them, and you can’t make yourself responsible for the choices they make.”

“Oh, I can stop them,” Buffy said with a hard smile. “I’m strong enough to prevent people from helping me. I didn’t have that option down here, but I will up above.”

Giles watched her carefully, wondering what she would say if she knew that Willow, Xander, and Oz were undoubtedly in a graveyard at this very moment. And Cordelia was with them, acting as bait. He decided that he was too tired to have that particular discussion at the moment, so he left it. “Things will look better in the morning, Buffy. Sleep well.”

As Giles started out the doorway, a soft whisper stopped him dead in his tracks. “Don’t go.” The Watcher came back in, and gave her a quizzical look. “Please, Giles. Don’t leave me alone.”

“You’re tired, Buffy. You need to sleep.” Giles grinned ruefully. “And I must confess to being somewhat fatigued myself. You’ll be fine here.”

“I hate sleeping here by myself,” Buffy whined shamelessly. “I miss my kids. And I hate for you to be in that room.” Giles raised an eyebrow, silently asking for clarification. “That chamber belonged to Jahari’s sister. She was my best friend down here, and she’s dead now, and I hate for anybody else to be in her room. Even if it was the only one that was free for newcomers. Please don’t go back there, Giles.”

Giles thought about pointing out that there were hundreds of empty rooms now, free for the taking, but he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and came back into Buffy’s chamber. He lay down beside her, fully dressed, and gathered her into his arms. He would have liked to ask her why she thought that all of her friends were dead, when she had so many of them back in Sunnydale. He wanted to know why she kept using the plural when she referred to her children. And he really **needed** to know the depth of her dedication to fighting evil once they reached the surface. There were a dozen other questions flooding through his mind as well, but before he could choose which issue to address first, he was completely unconscious.

 

~*~*~

The next morning, Buffy was entirely closed off to him. Oh, she was just as friendly as she had been the night before, and was still far more tactile than she had been back in Sunnydale, but she kept their conversation light and inconsequential. Giles didn’t get the impression that she regretted the previous night, but he sensed that she no longer wanted him to see her vulnerabilities. He didn’t take this personally. She was clearly holding herself together for her people, and he had no intention of endangering her control. It was only for a few hours anyway, just until they reached the surface. So the questions that he had been too tired to ask the night before went unasked, and he followed her lead.

After everyone had eaten breakfast, they set out for the portal. The hike lasted for several hours as no one appeared to be in a hurry. Despite the fact that they were moving into Osh-shutz territory, there was a carnival-like atmosphere among the group. This struck Giles as hubristic, and put him on edge. Every instinct he had was shouting at him to be careful, though the others did not seem to feel the danger. No, that wasn’t true. A quick glance at Buffy showed that she, at least, shared his concerns. Perhaps that was the reason for the distance she had shown towards him this morning; her Slayer senses were stretched taut. Or perhaps, she was simply nervous about getting the last of her people above and giving up command.

Giles dropped back to talk with his Slayer. “Do you sense anything?”

Buffy looked at him grimly. “No. And I should. They have to know that we’re leaving, and I can’t believe that they’re just going to let us go. They know about my Slayer instincts, and have gotten good about slipping in close before I sense them.” Buffy scanned the dark corridors and then glanced up at him. “I don’t know, Giles. I don’t sense them, but—“

“But your instincts say that they’re close.” Buffy nodded shortly, and then went back to scanning the perimeter. “I’m inclined to trust your instincts more than my eyes, Buffy. Why don’t you have your people pull in closer? And for God’s sake, can’t you tell them to be quiet?”

“I can’t tell them to be quiet, Giles. It’s a party! Everyone was like this on their way to the portal, or at least all the adults were.” Buffy stopped him, and gave him an earnest look. “I’m not sure you can understand, but maybe I can try to explain. I was the last person to come down here before they closed all the portals. That means that I’ve been down here the least amount of time of any other adult human... and that time is at least a dozen years, perhaps closer to fifteen. Most of these people,” Buffy vaguely waved her hands at the others, “have been in this dimension for twenty years or more. It’s horrible down here, Giles--worse than you can imagine! --but it’s the only home we’ve had for a very long time. It’s hard to give it up, unless you convince yourself that it isn’t quite real.”

Giles stared at Buffy intently, trying to read everything she couldn’t or wouldn’t say within her hazel eyes. “Is that how you feel,” he asked softly.

Buffy shrugged and gave him a rueful smile. “Uh, maybe? I’ve been fighting monsters the entire time that I’ve been down here, and when there weren’t monsters there were administrative headaches like you wouldn’t believe... but there were some good times down here too. A lot of ‘em. When I go above, I’ll be far away from those moments, and I’m afraid that they’ll be harder to remember. **This** is where I met my man; I’m not sure I would even have talked to Jahari if I had met him above. *This* is where my children were born; I mean, yeah, it was brutal, but it was also wonderful. **This** is where my first daughter died, and my mate, and my best friend. **This** is where they are buried; I can never go visit them again once I go above. So yeah, I have mixed feelings about leaving hell. They all do, Giles, and I have to let them deal with those feelings however they can.”

“I don’t understand why they can’t ‘deal’ with a bit less noise,” Giles muttered under his breath. Buffy glared at him good-naturedly, and they fell into a comfortable silence.

A few minutes later, they ran into a seven-man patrol. The volume of excited chatter increased significantly, and Giles began sweating. Any Jai’il Osh-shutz within a five-mile radius would certainly hear the humans. Were they insane, jeopardizing their rescue in this fashion?

Buffy once again demonstrated just how remarkable she was when she managed to impose order upon the unruly humans. “Okay, we are just about at the portal.” She pointed at four members of the patrol. “You guys go find the other patrol, and tell them we’ll meet them at the portal. The sooner the better.” The four people she had indicated nodded and ran off. “Okay, we’re almost there; let’s not screw it up now people. Talk **quietly** , and keep a sharp eye out.”

When they got to the portal, Buffy took up a position by the metal gate and began scanning the hallway. Giles went to join her, and was startled to see that she was shaking. Well, why not? Years of responsibility were almost over. She gave him a pleading glance. “Talk to me, Giles. Distract me.”

“If you wish,” Giles agreed with a shy smile. “There was something that I wanted to ask you anyway. Um, if that’s alright.” Buffy nodded, encouraging him to proceed. “I, uh, noticed that you keep saying ‘children,’ plural. How many do you have?”

“Well, you’ve met Giles, right,” she asked carefully.

Giles nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. He’s a wonderful boy, Buffy. You must be very proud of him.”

Buffy gave him a very odd look. “Yes, yes I am.”

“But—“ he prompted.

“But nothing,” Buffy snapped. “He’s a wonderful boy, like you said.” Giles continued to pierce her with his sharp gaze, and she suddenly deflated. “But... I’m not used to hearing others say nice things about him. It, uh, it took me by surprise.”

Giles gave her a look of genuine puzzlement. Hugh’s cautious silences in response to his questions about Buffy’s son were starting to make a bit more sense now, but not much more. “I don’t understand. He’s clearly very intelligent, and highly articulate. I enjoyed talking to him very much, even though he did almost all of the talking. I can’t imagine that anyone could spend more than a few moments in his company without complimenting him.”

Buffy smiled at him, a genuinely happy, thousand-watt smile, and Giles beamed back. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. But you were going to tell me about your other children. You mentioned daughters?”

“Only one, now,” Buffy said sadly. “I had a girl a few years before Giles. Dawn was all yellowy, and someone said that they thought she was jaundiced. I guess that is totally easy to cure in a modern hospital, but down here...”

“Oh, Buffy,” Giles breathed.

Buffy gave him a tight smile, acknowledging his sympathy but clearly letting him know that she didn’t want to discuss it. Giles gave a short nod, to let her know that he understood, and she relaxed a bit. “And then there was Giles, who I’m guessing is close to nine. And then the no-available-birth-control Russian roulette wheel missed me for seven years or so, until Joyce was born. She’s somewhere between one and two, and is hell on wheels.” Despite the denigrating words, Buffy had a proud smile on her face when she mentioned her baby, one that seemed a bit forced when she spoke of her son. There was a mystery there, and he intended to pursue it when they got back to Sunnydale, but for now he wanted to keep the conversation light.

“I must confess,” Giles mused, “I was quite surprised when I learned that you named your son after me.”

“Why would you be?” Buffy asked with surprise. “I never expected to see you or Mom again; I wanted to remember you guys.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Giles responded uncomfortably. “It’s just that I would have expected you to name your son William or Alexander.”

“Nah,” Buffy grinned. “Jahari said those names were just too white-bread for any kid of his.” Of course. She hadn’t picked the name, her spouse had; Giles was oddly disappointed by this. Buffy must have picked up on chagrin, because she added, “Jahari listened to every name I suggested, and he thought that Giles was the coolest name by far. I was thinking of the people behind the names, so of course I had to agree!”

Giles grinned. His sudden elation made no more sense than his previous disappointment, but it was real nonetheless. “I thought that your young man didn’t care for the name once he remembered that the boy’s last name would be Davis.”

Buffy giggled. “That was Jahari re-writing history. He **loved** that name at first! He thought naming his son after Miles Davis was the best idea he’d ever had. But then his sister started teasing him about it and he got embarrassed. No matter what he told Giles, Jahari **never** forgot his name. He would never do that.” Buffy suddenly sobered. “You don’t understand, Giles. You can’t possibly get how important names are down here. The slavers used to tell humans that they were nobody. They beat the hell out of any human who dared to use his own name. They made everyone anonymous, because they thought that was the best way to maintain order.” Giles shuddered, horrified by the very thought of such an existence. “Names are a symbol of freedom down here, and no human would **ever** give one up, even if he never used it.”

Giles was silent for a moment. Earlier, he had been pleased by the knowledge that Buffy had named her son after him. Now that he understood the value that names held in this society, he was awed. He cleared his throat self-consciously and tried to think of a response. “Well, I—“

“I sense them! They’re near.” Buffy’s yell drew the attention of the rest of the group, and she raised her voice dramatically. The sight of Buffy commanding others awed Giles; she was very good at it. “Everybody up! Now, people! I’ll hold them off, but you guys have got to go **NOW**. I’m going to lead the Jell-O Shots away from here, so somebody is going to have to stay behind to let the other patrol know what’s going on. Everybody else needs to get their asses up above **yesterday.** ”

Giles expected them to argue, but none of them did. He found himself cursing Buffy’s leadership ability, the same quality that he had been admiring just moments before. She needed help, damnit! Buffy’s people evidently didn’t believe that, or didn’t care, because they immediately began piling on top of each other and straining for the portal. Despite the orderly departure, most of them looked like they were on the edge of a panic. Giles realized that nobody was going to stay and help Buffy. Nobody but him.

Buffy started moving down the corridor, clearly following her “Spidey Sense.” After a few steps she swung around, sword raised. “Giles! What are you doing here? I told you to go above.”

“Bugger that,” Giles said coarsely. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“The hell you aren’t,” Buffy hissed angrily. “I can handle these guys by myself, or at least buy enough time for everyone to escape. So get outta here!”

“Whether you need help fighting or not, you need me. What if the portal closes; how will you get out?”

“You’ll open it again,” Buffy declared stoutly, though her eyes showed fear at this prospect. “It’s no biggie.”

“You’re right,” Giles conceded. “I **can** open it on the other side, but it takes over an hour. How old would you be then?” Buffy started to protest, but Giles overrode her. “Is it fair to your children, to have you come back to them years older than they remember? And how about you? You’ll go mad, down here all by yourself for years.” Giles deliberately gentled his tone, trying to convince her. “Let me stay, Buffy. Let me fight by your side, and help defend the portal. And if we don’t make it in time, let me keep you company while I try to open it again from this side.”

Buffy scowled fiercely at him, and Giles was certain that she was about to refuse. Instead, she clenched her teeth and gritted out, “Fine. Just don’t get knocked unconscious. If you do, I’m totally going to kick your ass as soon as you wake up.”

Giles gave her a cheeky grin. “Promises, promises,” he crooned out. Buffy glared at him, and then gave him a reluctant smile. She held out her left hand, and tugged him along behind her.

It had only been a few months since Giles had patrolled with Buffy, but this felt like a brand new experience. In some ways, it was. Buffy had always liked to chat when they patrolled, but now she was silent. Giles watched her move, intrigued by the differences he saw. She had always been graceful, but now she moved like a panther. She had obviously honed her instincts, just as he had told her to do when he first met her, because she never hesitated whenever she encountered branches in the corridors. She knew what she needed to do, and knew how to do it. Giles was enchanted. So much so, that he forgot to pay attention.

“Get down!” Buffy slammed into him hard, and he stumbled to his knees... just in time to prevent a spear from hitting his chest. He felt a rush of air through his hair as the projectile passed over his head. He turned to Buffy, to see if she was okay, but she was already on her feet, holding her sword up defiantly. With a rush of pride, Giles sprung up and stood by her side.

The fight was vicious, and they were vastly outnumbered, but Giles and Buffy held the advantage in terrain. Although there may have been thirty Jai’il in the nearby cavern, the passageway leading up to the Slayer and her Watcher was unusually narrow. Moreover, there was a bend in the passage, so spears and arrows were quite useless. Buffy and Giles stood in a bottleneck and the Jai’il could not send more than two or three soldiers at a time to attack them. The humans made short work of their foes, and of the next batch, and of the next... but by the time Giles sliced the head off of his fifth slaver, he had to admit that he was beginning to tire. “How long can they keep this up?” Giles asked waspishly.

“Pretty much forever,” Buffy answered cheerfully.

“You needn’t sound so chipper about it, Buffy,” Giles snarled back.

“Why not?” Buffy asked happily. “As long as they’re coming after us, they aren’t looking for side corridors to get around us. We’re doing it, Giles,” she gushed. “We’re keeping them away from the portal. My people are going to get out of here!”

Giles smiled, suddenly catching Buffy’s enthusiasm. “How much longer do you estimate before the last patrol reaches the portal?”

“Oh, let’s give them another fifteen minutes, or at least ten. Think you can last that long, Watcher?” she teased.

Giles ducked to avoid a particularly aggressive blow that was aimed at his head. While he was crouching, he aimed his sword up through the Jai’il’s chest and skewered him. Finding he couldn’t pull his sword free, he simply snatched up the dead soldier’s weapon and turned to Buffy with a grin. “I’ll last longer than you, Slayer, if you don’t stop dropping your shoulder in that fashion.”

“Oh yeah, who just lost his weapon?” Buffy demanded hotly.

Giles pretended not to hear her. “And twice you missed a possible kill because you were relying too heavily upon the blade of your weapon. Your sword has a point as well, and I would urge you to use it.”

“And you should have stepped back instead of ducking,” Buffy responded. “You lose stability when you change your center of gravity. You’re lucky that your guy was incompetent; I know some grandmothers who would have taken you out just then.”

Shocked and hurt, Giles swung around to look Buffy in the face. He found a devilish smile on her face, and an adorable twinkle in her eyes. She was joking. Right, he’d show her. She saw the wordless challenge in his face, and winked to show her acceptance. And the contest was on, to see who could demonstrate the best Slaying technique and who could deliver the most devastating comment to the other.

Giles and Buffy attacked the Jai’il with renewed vigor, each trying to demonstrate their Slaying techniques. And with the attacks came the running commentaries. At first, Giles was determined to make as many criticisms as possible, to pay Buffy back for her grandmother remark. But as he began watching her, he couldn’t help falling back into their old training patterns. He gave encouragement along with critiques, and he Watched. To aid in this, Giles stepped back and let Buffy work alone. Oh, he stayed close enough to help her if she needed it, but mostly he observed her.

Buffy had lost much of the discipline that he had drilled into her months or years ago. She **did** drop her shoulder and rely too heavily upon the blade. She also telegraphed moves, failed to follow through after ineffective sword thrusts, and tended to overextend herself on the left side. These were all things that he could help her with once they instituted a regular training schedule, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him as he realized that he could still be of use to her. But in a larger sense, she had outgrown him. Her technique might have gotten sloppy over the years, but her general ability as a Slayer had increased exponentially. She was comfortable with her abilities in a way that she never had been before; she **owned** her powers. Buffy called upon her strength, speed and instincts effortlessly now, and she moved with the grace of a dancer. The deadliness she had always possessed was still there, but now a layer of beauty lay on top of it, and Giles was enchanted. And, he admitted to himself, proud. Once he helped her overcome a few bad habits, she would be one of the most effective Slayers in history. He always knew that she had had it in her.

~*~*~

Giles didn’t know how long they had been holding the bottleneck, but he didn’t think they could do it for much longer. At first, Buffy had used the corpses of dead Jai’il as shields for herself, and Giles had quickly followed her example. Now, however, there had to be at least twenty bodies, and they were starting to impede Buffy’s mobility. Also, Buffy was beginning to tire. He himself was already well past the point of optimal effectiveness. “We need to go, Buffy.”

Buffy shook her head stubbornly, and chanced a look in his direction. “No. It hasn’t even been ten minutes yet.” Although he didn’t doubt Buffy’s statement, Giles wondered how she knew that; his internal clock seemed to be completely non-functional down here in the land of eternal dark. Perhaps it was because Slayers were creatures of the night, or perhaps it was because she had had years to acclimate down here. In any case, he was disinclined to argue with her assessment. “I don’t want to leave here until I’m sure the other patrol has gotten away.”

“And how would you suggest we do that?” Giles snapped. “Unless I am completely turned around, there are at least three corridors leading to the portal. Am I right?” Buffy nodded grimly. “Surely you have noticed that our attackers are slowing down. How do you know that they aren’t sweeping around behind us?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Buffy turned towards him decisively. “I don’t. It will take them time to get behind us, but if they do, we’re screwed. And the members of my patrol receive a death warrant. You’re right; let’s book.” And with no more deliberation than that, Buffy turned her back on her own private killing field and trotted down the corridor. Giles blinked in surprise and took off after her.

Buffy set a hard pace back to the portal, but Giles was damned if he was going to let her outpace him. He was able to keep up without breathing **too** hard, but he was cursing himself for letting his jogging regimen slide over the summer. Just as he started to flag, Buffy muttered, “They’re closing on us,” and Giles discovered that he had more reserves after all.

Soon they came to a sharp corner, and then they were back at the portal. That beacon of hope was utter chaos. If Giles had figured accurately, there should have been eight members in the last patrol, four men who were sent to tell them to come in, plus however many stayed behind to tell them to go up; thirteen or fourteen altogether. Since there were six people fighting and three dead on the floor, he could only presume that the group had been attacked when they were in the process of moving above. There were at least a dozen Jai’il threatening the little band, perhaps more. In addition to the slavers that had followed him and Buffy...

Giles paused for a moment as he tried to determine the best course of action. He hadn’t factored in his Slayer, however. As he stood there pondering tactics, she rushed past him, screaming like a wild animal. She rushed into three Jai’il, and knocked them to the ground. Giles cursed under his breath and then dashed over to join her. “Excellent strategy, Buffy,” he said sarcastically. “Obviously a well-thought out plan. Care to let me in on the details?”

“It’s easy,” Buffy said with the same cheerfulness she’d demonstrated earlier. “You and I piss off the Jell-O Shots, they concentrate upon us, and everyone else escapes.”

“Capital plan,” Giles muttered. “It’s clear that you have foreseen all contingencies.”

“Of course!” To the Watcher’s surprise, Buffy giggled, and Giles felt his irritation melting away. “Now, you’re left-handed, right? So you take the ten on the left, I’ll take the ten on the right, and we’ll be out of her in no time.”

Whether it was the impossibility of the situation, the laughter in his Slayer’s voice, or just plain insanity, Giles never knew, but somehow, he felt himself joining in Buffy’s good spirits. He grinned, and nodded at their enemies. “Ladies first.”

“I always knew you were a gentleman, Giles,” Buffy sang out as she launched herself at the pack of soldiers. Although the move looked impetuous to the Watcher, it obviously wasn’t, for she took off two heads with one stroke. Giles followed her, doing no small amount of damage himself. There was no more time for conversation, but Giles imagined that he felt an approving smile directed at him before he took up a defensive position behind her.

Watcher and Slayer fought back to back, and they slowly forced the Jai’il away from the portal. Without hesitation, the six surviving humans began scrambling up again. Giles hated that they were leaving, even though he knew they were following Buffy’s orders. It was irrational, and he knew it, but the Watcher couldn’t help feeling contemptuous of the patrolmen for abandoning their general. Rather than making sense of this odd emotion, Giles marshaled his rage and turned it against the Jai’il attacking him. Several slavers fell before his wrath, and Buffy whistled in appreciation. Or perhaps she was just trying to capture his attention. “Giles! They’re up and out. We need to work our way back.”

“I think we can do that, Buffy, but how will we keep them off our backs long enough to go through the portal.”

“We don’t,” Buffy said succinctly. “I meant we go back through the tunnels. We let the portal close, then come back here in a few days when the heat is off and you can open it again.”

“Um, Buffy, I can’t open it down here,” Giles admitted sheepishly.

In her shock, Buffy actually turned around. Giles immediately lunged at the Jai’il who attempted to take advantage of Buffy’s distraction. She didn’t even notice the head that bounced off her foot. “What? But you said—“

“I said that I would try,” Giles insisted. “But I need several herbs and rare plants for the spell to work, and those are still above. Unless we can find them down here...”

“You bastard,” Buffy exclaimed. “You tricked me!”

“I couldn’t let you fight alone, Buffy,” Giles said mildly. “You needed someone by your side.”

Buffy didn’t respond to that, as she was too busy swearing under her breath about treacherous Watchers. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “You and I are going to have a little chat about this. Later, back in Sunnydale. For now, this is what we’re going to do. We’re gonna turn so that we can both see the portal.” They did so, and Giles saw that the path to the portal was still clear. “On the count of three, we’re going to run. You’re going to jump at me, and I’ll help you jump up. Then I’ll jump behind you.”

Giles hated to go against her, but she needed the truth. “I’m sorry, Buffy, but I can’t make that jump. You’re going to have to go first, and I’ll grab hold of your leg.”

Buffy quickly took out two slavers and then turned towards Giles in exasperation. “Are you telling me the truth,” she asked suspiciously, “or are you just trying to get me to go up first?”

“Buffy—“

“I don’t want to hear it, Giles. What I want to hear is your promise that you won’t let go of me, no matter what. I want you to give me your word that you are going to do your damnedest to get above, regardless of what happens to me.” Giles started to protest again, but Buffy cut him off. “Otherwise, we play this my way.” Giles scowled, but agreed. “Okay, let’s get rid of these Shots, then go on the count of three.”

It wasn’t a great plan, but it would work... with one refinement. “A moment, Buffy. Aim to disable, not kill. The other soldiers—“

“—Are likely to step on corpses, but go around the wounded,” Buffy finished for him. “Good thinking, Giles.” Although Giles had been her teacher in tactics, he felt himself blushing with pleasure over her praise.

Giles swung low, cutting his opponent deeply in the leg. The other Jai’il screamed, and Giles guessed that Buffy had done the same. This was confirmed when he heard his Slayer’s voice calling out, “one, two, THREE!”

They both ran for the portal, with Giles a bit ahead of Buffy. He was determined to get there first, even if he had to burst a lung to do it. When he was directly under it, he held out his hands at waist level and screamed, “NOW!” Buffy ran and jumped up on his hands, he gave her a boost, and she jumped for the portal. When he was certain that she had hold of something up there, he leapt as high as he could and grabbed hold of her calf. Buffy was struggling to pull herself up, but she was bringing him with her. They were going to make it.

And then, he felt a hand grabbing hold of his thigh and another on his foot. He looked down, and there were not one, but two Jai’il dangling from his right leg. His first thought was that he needed to let go of Buffy. Surely even her strength could not hold out with the drag caused by three full-grown males hanging from her. He should drop, and ensure her escape. Except he had promised...

Every instinct he had was screaming at him to put Buffy first, and it took every bit of discipline he possessed not to listen to that instinct. He had given Buffy his word, and she trusted him; now it was time to trust her. Her physical strength was amazing--a special gift from the Powers that Be--but Buffy’s strength of will and courage belonged to her alone... and that was what would pull them out of this. And with that realization, Giles made a conscious decision to put his faith in his Slayer.

Giles brought his left foot down hard on the lower Jai’il. He heard bones crack, and then felt the loathsome creature drop away. The slaver grasping his thigh would be more difficult to dislodge. Giles was wondering whether one hand would be enough to maintain his hold on Buffy, when the world shifted. Part of his body, his hands, had just entered the portal.

Going through the portal was the most bizarre experience in his somewhat varied life. He had missed this on the way down, because he had passed out the moment he entered the pool. Going up, however, was another different.

Giles felt his body slowing down as it entered the portal. His blood stopped moving, his heart stopped beating, his nerve endings stopped transmitting... everything shut down except for his thought processes. Years ago, he had gone to see “The Empire Strikes Back.” He decided that the movie was over-rated and had never thought about it again, but now he found himself remembering Han Solo and wondering whether this is what it would feel like to be cryogenically frozen. Time moved differently here, and he wondered whether he might go mad from the loneliness before it was all over. There were no colors, no lights, no forms... only an endless now, constantly repeating itself. Intellectually, he knew that this was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like hours, or perhaps days, or even a lifetime. Just as he was certain that he was going to scream, however, he was out.

To his surprise, Giles recovered from his journey very quickly. He snatched his leg away from the Jai’il who was still in transit, rolled away from the pool, and bellowed, “Lily! The herbs, Lily! Spread them about!” The gothic blonde obeyed him immediately, and the viscous liquid abruptly disappeared. As soon as it was gone, there was a flash of light and tiles began magically popping out of the ether to cover the pool. Within moments, he found himself staring at an empty ceremonial pool, about six inches deep, with the upper portion of a Jai’il lying in the middle of the tiles. The demon had been neatly severed through his torso. Although Giles had killed more than a few Jai’il Osh-shutz over the past month, and none of those deaths had been pretty, this particular one sickened him. He buried his face into his arms for a moment, and tried to pull himself together.

As soon as he began collecting his thoughts, one stood out from all the others: _Buffy._ Oh dear Lord, he hadn’t made sure she was clear of the pool when he told Lily to close it! In a panic, Giles raised his head to look for his Slayer. The room was packed with people, literally wall-to-wall, and the noise was horrendous, but he picked her out immediately. She was standing by a wall on the other side of the pool, with a baby (Joyce, he presumed) on her hip and her other arm around her son. Her smile was bright enough to light up an airport runway, and the happiness she radiated was clearly visible to him.

Giles stared at the small family. A Slayer with a family. The Council would not be pleased. He wondered what Joyce and the Scoobies would think. Somehow, he doubted that the woman who had blamed him for her “little girl’s” disappearance would be any happier with this turn of events than the Council was going to be. And he didn’t see Buffy’s friends dancing with joy either.

And yet, as Giles stared at Buffy and her children, he realized that he didn’t care what personal complications might arise. His Slayer had a family! He had guided a girl who lived long enough to raise a family. She may be the one girl in all the world, but that hadn’t deprived her of the chance to be a wife and a mother. She was able to have a “normal life” after all. She may have had to go to hell and rescue hundreds of people from slavery in order to achieve this life, but she had done it.

A huge, soppy grin spread across his face, and he had to fight down an attack of giggles. There were going to be a myriad number of administrative difficulties involved with relocating this many people, but he would deal with them in a minute. Right now, he wanted to enjoy this moment and revel in a vision that he had never dared dreamed before. A mature Slayer, with a family, and a future. It was a beautiful sight.

 

The End


End file.
